How serious is the risk that sudden death could occur related to inhalant use?
It appears that the risk of sudden death with any given episode of inhalant use exceeds that presented with any other drug of abuse. Death has been noted to occur via a variety of cardiovascular, pulmonary, accidental, and violence-related mechanisms. Of particular importance is death via the induction of refractory cardiac rhythm disturbances, referred to as the “sudden sniffing death syndrome”. Sudden death risk appears to be prominent, even with initial experimentation. In British studies of sudden death related to inhalant use, of every ten persons who died from inhalants, up to three of these victims died during their initial inhalant use experience. 8) What evidence exists that inhalant abuse causes neuropsychological damage to the user? Clinical studies investigating this question are few and have been criticized on methodological grounds. Nevertheless, the aggregate weight of these studies suggests that chronic long-term use of inhalants is likely to result in neurologic defici
